I never wanted to see you crawl
by Maroon-dragon
Summary: Sherlock tried, he really did, but he is just lost without his blogger. He needs John to destroy the remains of Moriarty his empire.
1. God came back

**I hate the producers of Sherlock, how can they do this to John! (honestly I think they did a great job of the latest ep…but they need to have the next one up much sooner..I can't wait for an entire year!) I want to thank my lovely beta reader for the work she did on my chapters :D** **Thank you Dennydifferent. **

The blond man slowly ascended the stairs, on his way to his oh so empty apartment. It had been two months. Two painfully quiet months that Sherlock was gone. He had taken a leave of absence from the practice for two weeks after it, but now he was picking up the shards of his life again. The silence was still too much to bear though, every time he expected a request for tea, for a pen, for the paper, for anything! He wondered how long it would take for his brain to acknowledge that Sherlock was really gone. There still was this niggling thought in the back of his head that there would be some sort of miracle, that one day Sherlock would be doing some strange experiment in the kitchen, as if he had never jumped off that building.

As he opened the door he sighed as there was once again an empty apartment. The shadows long and conveying his feelings perfectly as he placed his bag of groceries in the kitchen.

"You didn't change anything." The deep baritone voice cut through his thoughts.

"No I didn't, how could I change anything you left behind." He was used to talking to the ghost now. His deceptive mind playing tricks on him.

"John…I'm so sorry."

"Of course you are, you left me Sherlock, you're dead…it's easy for you to feel sorry when I'm the one that needs to move on." John still didn't turn around, just kept continuing to put the tea away, and the milk he always seemed to run out of when he had still been living with Sherlock.

His fingers lost his grip for a second, and for a moment, time seemed to slow down for John, as he watched with a strange fascination how the bottle of milk fell to the ground. The same way Sherlock had looked. Only the milk never ended up on the floor. It ended up in a white hand, with long fingers gripping it. It took John a while to realize he wasn't alone. He followed the fingers, to a wrist, an arm covered in purple silk, up to the face of the man that had been haunting him for the past two months.

"Hi…" Sherlock uttered. No-not Sherlock. It had to be a ghost somehow. And suddenly John was taken back to the time that they had _forced_ a cab to a standstill and Sherlock had said; "Welcome to London". He doubled over, laughing his head off. It was a hysterical laughter. He had gone officially insane.

"John? John are you alright?" And then he was off the ground, not laughing anymore, just trying to hurt the man standing in front of him. Hurt him as much as he could. Trying to make him feel the same pain that he was dealing with, but he knew it could only ever be a fraction of what he felt.

"John stop it! John!" Sherlock never hit back, he just deflected most of the punches the best he could against the ex-soldier. And just as fast as he had started it, as fast the life went out of him.

"You were dead, you _are _dead…how could you do this to me Sherlock? I saw you fall!" The genius felt the wetness of Johns tears on his face as he stared up in those brown eyes.

There was a slam of the door as it was roughly pushed open. "I should have known you'd go here. For Gods sake Sherlock. There is a reason we didn't want John to know."

"Mycroft? YOU KNEW? So when I came to you, screaming, pleading for him to come back you were just having your fun!" John was furious and confused.

"Mycroft and I decided to keep me away from you for your own protection, to keep you safe." Sherlock was still lying underneath John as the smaller man had tackled him during the assault.

"And we would have succeeded if you hadn't come here Sherlock, we made the plan for a reason!"

"What plan god damnit?" John needed this cleared up before he officially went insane .

"I was to disappear…take out all of Moriarty his men, to make sure there was no threat. You needed to be safe, you needed to believe my death…they would go after you otherwise."

"Yes, and Sherlock here rendered that plan futile by showing up here You might want to get up Dr Watson…I don't think my brothers ribs have healed completely yet." Oh how John wanted to hit the older man.

"You two are idiots! Especially you Sherlock! You know me and still you think you are keeping me safe by dying? I was miserable you moron. Did you two ever consider the fact that while I might be physically safe I would still be hurt? Do you know I have to pass Bart's every single damn day, Looking at that roof knowing that you jumped? And hearing everyone tell me what a terrible fake you were? A murderer, a psychopath. Right now I'm willing to believe them as you've proved yourself so capable of hurting me!"

"I wanted to keep you safe…"

"Then you should have let me in on the bloody plan in the first place! No, you're Sherlock…you always work alone." That seemed to spark something in the brunette.

"I tried to! I tried to work on my own, but deducing is impossible to do if you are haunted by images of the man that thinks you are dead! I'm lost without my blogger John, why do you think I'm here= Why do you think I ruined the plan Mycroft and I made mere minutes before I jumped?" It would be so easy to believe him, to wrap his arms around that lanky frame and never let him go. Yet the doubt was still there. "This is all a dream…"

"John this isn't" Mycroft began.

"Go away! You aren't real…don't torture me anymore. Don't force me to hear more of this rubbish only to wake up and find him gone again…" He started to pinch his arm, trying to wake up from this horrible nightmare. Sherlock attempted to touch him, but he violently jerked back, hitting his head on one of the open cupboards and then John knew no more.

**AN more to come obviously :D **


	2. Not yet Sherlock, not yet

**AN well second chapter is up now, hope you guys like it :D. Very happy to have so many people add my story to their favourite/alert list. **

John was used to the pounding in his head, he had more than one hangover after Sherlock…He wasn't like Harry yet, but it was a slippery slope he was on and sometimes he thought it might be easy to let himself slip. He turned around on the bed, trying to get a little bit more sleep and hopefully dispel his headache. After tossing and turning for a few minutes he realised that sleep wouldn't come, so with a mighty effort John got out of bed.

The room was exactly how he had left it, though now he thought about it he couldn't quite remember what had happened the night before, there were some vague memories of talking to Sherlock, but he always talked to Sherlock when he was drunk. Had he punched him? He had a niggling feeling something had changed over the course of the last 24 hours.

"You kept my Stradivarius clean?" that deep baritone voice of his old flat mate mused. Suddenly it rushed back to John, the laughter, the punching…Mycroft. He was afraid that if he turned around he would find the room empty again, but there he was in all his glory. The man who had been medically dead for the past two months, dressed like he always was, with his Stradivarius in his hands, as if he had never left.

John didn't know how to act so he chose the direct option. "Yes, you loved that thing more than anything else. It seemed the right way to honour you. Though now that you are alive you can do it yourself from now on." The blond man felt as if he had reached some sort of twilight zone, it just didn't seem to register in his head yet that Sherlock really had come back.

"Right, John I think we need to talk." Why was it that all conversations starting with that sentence always ended the wrong way? He had heard it multiple times from girlfriends that couldn't deal with Sherlock. He guessed that at one point they all seemed to realize that Sherlock and John were a package deal, you wanted one you got the other as well.

"Well start talking then." The older man sighed as he sunk into what had become his chair in the time he had been living with Sherlock, after his 'death' he had mostly sat in the other chair. The smell on it reminded him of the brunette, it comforted him.

"Everything I did it was to protect you." At this John scoffed.

"Moriarty had sent men to kill you, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade. If I hadn't jumped they would have killed you all. Didn't you notice how all those professional killers that moved into our street simply moved away after I jumped?" Sherlock refused to use the words 'after I died' and John was glad of it.

"To be quite honest, I didn't notice very much after you….you were gone." John mumbled, the headache keeping him from giving a better answer.

"I didn't stage my death John, I was lucky to be alive after that drop. I tried to land in the best way possible, but even I couldn't really predict the outcome. When it was clear in the hospital that I would make it, Mycroft arranged for me to go to a private facility. For one thing to keep those bloodhounds that call themselves reporters off my back, but also to make sure that you never learned of my survival."

"Sherlock, I carried your coffin to your grave. I actually gave you a eulogy. Did you know how difficult it was for me to write that? To get up in the morning, knowing I was putting your body into the ground. Knowing that I had to face hundreds of reporters to give a speech to people that barely cared you weren't alive anymore? Do you have any idea what that did to me?"

"It was for you own protection. It was a beautiful speech by the way. Mycroft gave me a recorded version of it. I tried so hard John, to take out Moriarty's men without your help. To come back once it was all finished…"

"But then he realized he had gotten to attached to you. That he needed you around to think clearly. You may have gotten him clean of the drugs and the nicotine, but you have become an addiction yourself." Mycroft finished for his younger brother. John had never loathed the man more than at that moment. He had given Jim the ammunition he needed, he had kept Sherlock away from him.

"So what now? I'm just supposed to pretend that this didn't happen? Are we going to be called away to some crime scene for Lestrade? Am I the last one to know about this?"

"No one can know John, and we suspect that Moriarty's men aren't all located in the UK. I need my blogger with me John, please help us take out the man responsible for this. After that we can tell everyone he was in a witness protection program." John didn't doubt for a second that Mycroft could fix the paperwork for that, without there actually being a program.

"I've been going through hell for the past few months, why do you think I should trust you again? With my life no less? And what are you going to do about all those people believing you're a fake?"

"Just let me make it up to you John, and they already thought I was a freak before this. I will be able to deal with this just as well."

"I need to think…" John stood up, swaying lightly on his feet. As a reflex Sherlock grabbed his writs to steady him, with a strength the older man didn't think he had left in him he yanked it free. Sherlock looked as if someone had stabbed him in the chest. Stabbed him in the chest with an iron poker.

"Not yet Sherlock, not yet." John muttered before returning to his own room.

He was so confused. In a way he liked the physical contact, it reminded him that Sherlock really was here. That the detective hadn't left him. There was an underlying current of unease and a rebellion against trusting those delicate hands again. He had been hurt and betrayed so badly. Logically he understood where Sherlock had been coming from, but he had been his best friend damnit! Two months of hell, to find out that he had been lied to, to learn that the man he had cared for so deeply had been only miles away from where he was living in a perfectly good condition.

He had gone to Mycroft crying and pleading and had felt like a fool for begging at the aristocrat's heels to bring back his friend, while the older man actually had the ability to do just that.

There was no doubt in John his mind though; he would go with Sherlock. To hell and back if it was necessary, because he'd already known what hell was like by losing Sherlock. And no place in the world could be worse than a world in which Sherlock Holmes wasn't at his side. They were friends, flatmates and though John would never admit it out loud they were something much more than that. He would go with the detective, and destroy what was left of the evils incarnate's empire. And maybe, just maybe, he might be able to trust the detective again.

**AN: I rewrote this thing a million times and every time Sherlock became to ooc, please let me know if he stayed in character this time, because I really tried.**


	3. You said you would keep him safe

"You said you would keep him safe, Mycroft."

"You know just as well as I do that I could not protect him from the emotional trauma Sherlock."

"Why didn't you tell me how much this had damaged him? You kept telling me that he was getting better."

"He was doing better considering everything that happened. What was I supposed to do? Tell you that Dr Watson was on his way to a full mental collapse, you would have disrupted the operation entirely by rushing to his side, which was apparently inevitable."

"You could have…" Sherlock stopped talking as he spotted John in the doorway. The blond man still found it strange to hear Sherlock talk. Still believing it to be a deceptive mind trick somehow.

"Tea, Sherlock?" The question left a bitter taste in his mouth. It was so _normal._ After setting down two cups of tea, ignoring Mycroft entirely he decided to ask the Holmes brothers exactly what they were planning to do about the current situation.

"First we have to fabricate papers of you moving to a different town, leaving your current place of work and all your friends behind. Considering the recent events they will hardly wonder about it. After that we will get you off the grid, the same way Sherlock is." Mycroft supplemented the answer.

"You mean, I will be committing 'suicide'?" It would actually be very believable. Lestrade, Molly and Mrs Hudson already kept tabs on him, waiting for him to do something drastic.

"We actually didn't want you to disappear like that. Once the mission is finished it will be a lot more problematic to resurrect two dead people." Sherlock answered from his spot on the couch.

"Surely not much more difficult than one? People are bound to notice it when I go off the grid. Lestrade and Molly have been keeping a close eye on me. Not to mention Mrs Hudson."

"Yes, you do point out a very valid argument as to why killing you would be much more convenient. I proposed that myself as well, but Sherlock here refused to even entertain the idea."

"Kill me, I don't care whether it will be suicide or some accident. I will not have Mrs Hudson or anyone else wondering about what happened to me."

"John, you do realize that once you 'die' you can't just come back. Everyone you left behind will be moving on after this and they will not accept you back into their lives that easily."

"I don't care Sherlock! As much as I like them, this life isn't worth living without you in it, and if you have to go through the whole resurrecting process than so will I." Sherlock didn't say anything else to contradict him, and Mycroft gave him a winning smile.

"Good, glad that's settled. I will make sure everything is handled as discretely as possible."

"Maybe a stupid question, but what will happen once we are off the grid. Are we going to start some random killing spree?" It was a joke, but John had no doubt about it that people would die. Hopefully not him or Sherlock.

"No John, that would be highly.." Mycroft struggled to find the right word for it "indiscrete." He finished eventually. "Knowledge is power my dear Dr Watson. Feed the right information, or in our case the wrong information, to the right people and watch the domino's fall." A shiver ran down Johns spine, the older Holmes really was a terrifying person.

"We plan to murder only a few people, and make sure a couple of them get caught by the police and blame other criminals for the incident. They will fight each other without ever realizing we are doing it." For a moment John saw that spark again in his friends eyes. The same one when he realized the game Moriarty was playing, the gleam that meant he had a great game to play. It reminded him of the better times.

"I just need a moment, okay." John walked out of the room, trying to control his breathing. It was going all so damn fast. It all seemed like Sherlock hadn't died two months ago, the only indication he really had of it was the chest pain that still hadn't receded and the fact that the Holmes brothers were being ridiculously civil to each other. Well as civil as they could be at least.

The plan was brilliant as was expected of a Holmes. Blaming the others would mean they could get away without having people following them. The only thing that really worried John though was that Sherlock was involved. When Sherlock was involved nothing went according to plan. _´That could also be because he never tells you his plans. For all you know they all went great.´ _his mind supplied bitterly. Though he was right to be angry at the detective, John still felt guilty for the thought. He just couldn´t find it in himself to hate the man when he was finally back with him. _´Never speak ill of the death´_ he thought, then snorted. Here he was; sitting against his bedroom door trying to control his breathing while the two Holmes brothers were probably casually talking about what they were going to do as if it was all just a game. That was just it, to them it was. They didn't care about the collateral damage. Which was exactly what John was.

He regretted his thoughts immediately. Sherlock had been angry at Mycroft this morning about John being hurt. The detective was arrogant, annoying, good at hurting John and sometimes a little inhuman about other people: but he did care about John. He jumped of a bloody roof to show that he cared. He always had a flair for dramatics. John had long ago realized that Sherlock wasn't a sociopath, he was just a socially awkward person. Asperger had come to mind once or twice, but it really didn't matter what name you put on it. Sherlock just didn't know any better.

When he came back to the living room there was a stony silence between the two brothers that almost had John walking back into his bedroom. "When are we leaving exactly?"

Mycroft gave him one of those saccharine smiles that made the smaller man want to hit him. "I have just sent a text to Anthea, by this time tomorrow Dr John Watson will have a tragic accident involving a cabdriver losing control of the wheel and driving straight into a wall combusting the car and leaving nothing but burning remains to be identified by DNA."

John swallowed, it was really happening. No turning back after this. _'Don't be ridiculous John, it's not like you would want to be anywhere else in the world.'_ "No one will get hurt?"

"No we will be using two unidentified corpses two portray you and the driver. We will make sure no other civilians will be hit by the cab, or the shrapnel from the explosion."

"Shrapnel? You are planning to use a bomb?"

"Well of course, we have to make sure the car explodes accordingly to the plan. We can't have the bodies stay intact now, can we? Don't look so worried Dr Watson, my team has the highest expertise in working with bombs. It will not have a big radius; it has to look as a car explosion after all. I bid you two goodbye and I recommend to start packing. By this time tomorrow you will be on a plane to Italy." With those words Mycroft left the apartment, leaving John and Sherlock to prepare themselves for the upcoming changes in their lives. 

**AN: SOOOOOOOO SORRY! I haven't been updated in a while as I have been swamped with making arrangements for school next year, and I went to England for a while….I will try to update faster next time. Please R & R**.** This piece will soon be changed with the corrected version but I didn't want to make you guys wait any longer. **


	4. Rome sweet Rome

Rome was beautiful. There were no other words for it. The old buildings, the white stone gleaming in the sun, and of course the ruins that told stories from long gone. If John didn´t love London so much he would definitely consider Rome. Perhaps when he finally retired. The cab he and Sherlock had taken at the airport finally slowed down in front of a rather plain building. He had no idea where exactly they were, but Sherlock moved confidently through a small door at the right side of the building. They were greeted by a rather loud Italian woman, who to Johns amazement went on and hugged Sherlock talking rapid Italian to him. Sherlock responded with a few words in Italian himself to which the woman gave an affirmative.

"John let's go, we have the room…"

"On the second floor, right?" The look of astonishment was worth every penny John had on him. Clearly with all his deductive skills Sherlock hadn't realized that John was actually quite proficient in Italian_. 'Shows him he shouldn't assume things all the time.'_ He thought with a huff as he followed Sherlock up the stairs. The room didn't have much furniture. Two dressers and two double beds and a chair. Sherlock immediately put his laptop on the bed and started working.

"I'll just go take a shower." John mumbled getting a vague "Hmmhm" in return. The water was warm and relaxing. He never minded traveling, but his shoulder did get stiff and his muscles cramped from sitting for such a long time.

"Dinner?" Sherlock suggested as John stepped out of the shower. "I know a good place a few streets away, the owner owes me a favour."

"Is there any place in the world where they don't owe you a favour?"

"Yes, I never cared much for Tibet." He said it with such a straight face John wondered whether he was serious.

The food was delicious, and the host reminded John vaguely of Angelo with the way he behaved towards Sherlock. It was oddly comforting knowing that some things stayed the same.

"So….you speak Italian?"

"Why don't you deduce how I learned that." He joked, though there wasn't the same lightness to it as it had been before…well everything.

"Don't be ridiculous John, if I could have deduced it I wouldn't have asked." Sherlock scowled.

"A mate from Afghanistan was partly Italian. He taught me when we weren't bored. I can also speak French, though not as good as Italian and a bit of German."

"You have a natural aptitude for languages then?"

"I guess, but I just thought it would be a good idea to know more than just English. So how do you know the woman we are staying with?"

Sherlock looked uncomfortable for a moment. "The woman, Maria, we are staying with was my nanny when I was younger. She left when I was five, but whenever my mother didn't want to deal with me she send me off to Italy to stay with Maria for a couple of weeks. It's how I learned Italian and know the city."

"Your mother just send you away?" it seemed rather harsh.

"My mother never was particularly interested in either me or Mycroft. Mycroft was send to boarding school from an early age. I would have suffered the same fate, if it wasn't for every boarding school kicking me out for bad behaviour."

"What about your father?"

"Left our family for his mistress, quite the scandal. I was three and Mycroft was ten."

"So she always send you to Italy?"

"Not always, I also had a French nanny and a British one, but I preferred Maria."

"She reminds me a bit of Mrs Hudson. Only an Italian version." They shared a small smile at that. Sweet Mrs Hudson.

"So what exactly is it we need to do here? In Rome I mean." He had to hold back a moan as he took the first bite of his ice cream, even Sherlock seemed to be enjoying his food. John took a good look at the man. He had dark circles under his eyes and he had certainly lost some weight, making his cheekbones even more prominent. He nearly resembled the skull back in London, only with hair and eyes in it. He recognized the signs of lack of food and sleep easily, as they stared back at him every time he looked in the mirror.

"Jim has two different mob families in Italy working for him. One is here in Rome, and the other is from Venice. We will be supplying them both with information on the other party. The one thing they love more than following Jim his orders, is to get rid of the other family to take their ground. We will use their rivalry against them. They will destroy themselves."

"So how do we get them the information?"

"There is a man, who will be arriving tomorrow afternoon in Rome, who works as a scavenger so to speak. He is the one that they put on the lookout for information that can either threaten the family or help them. No one knows exactly who he is, which means he can move undetected."

"If no one knows who he is then how do we…oh never mind you and Mycroft have already figured it out have you?" John groaned when he saw the smug smile on Sherlock his face. Some things really never changed.

The evening was still at a nice temperature and they opted for a walk. They arrived at the Trevi fountain not much later. It was stunning at night. The cascading water was luminous in the lights, casting a beautiful light pattern on the surrounding stones. They walked down the steps till they were close enough to feel the spray of the water on their faces.

"Want to make a wish?" Sherlock asked him.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"A wish John, it's tradition at the Trevi fountain to make a wish. You just turn around make a wish and throw a coin over your left should as a sacrifice."

"Aren't we a bit too old to believe in wishing wells?" John asked scepticly, not believing that this was coming from the man who only believed in facts and figures.

"It's a tradition. I always came here with Maria and she would hand me a coin, afterwards she would scold me for telling her that wishing was for "silly people". It's been a long time since I've been here." He looked so wistful at the fountain that John took the coin out of his hand, turned around and made a wish. The small plop indicated that he had thankfully hit the water and not something else. Now that would have been embarrassing. Sherlock did the same and for a moment they just watched the water in a comfortable silence, something John hadn't quite believed to be possible between them anymore. He thought back on his wish. '_Please let us get back to the way we were before'._ Maybe he should make an effort for it instead of depending on wishes.

**AN: Well here is the next chapter, please review : ).**


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